Half Past Nine on a Summer Night

The day Liang Yueting moved to Nancheng, the rain had just stopped.

Water had pooled in the narrow alley. She dragged her suitcase along with all her strength, its wheels spraying mud onto the trousers of the person standing by the wall.

The boy pushed himself up with one arm and rose to his feet, nonchalant. Beneath the brim of his hoodie, his eyes were as black as ink. His expression was cool and impatient as he said in a low voice, "Apologize."

Those were the first words Lin Zhaoye ever said to her.

-

On the day she left Nancheng, the boy saw her off at the train station, his hood pulled over his head.

Their hasty family was falling apart once again. The two middle-aged adults had long since stopped caring and stood far away.

As her suitcase jolted over the uneven ground, numbing her hand, Liang Yueting saw him seem to part his lips amid the noisy whistle of the old green train.

Just like her own mumbled, one and only "Big Brother."

She never heard Lin Zhaoye's last words.

-

They met again years later.

He stood on a live stage, surrounded by a crowd and dazzling lights. Just a couple of casual strums on his guitar were enough to set off screams and cheers.

Yet across the sea of people, he looked only at her. His pupils glimmered in the darkness, his jawline clean and defined, as he repeated in a low voice:

"Liang Yueting, look at me."

Years later, she finally heard what he had said on that day, at the dividing point between a boy's confused, frantic youth and whatever came next:

"I will love you forever."

Liang Yueting, I will love you forever.

*"How could my muse lack a theme? You yourself are the very essence of poetry."

"You must know, I am always writing about you."

/ Shakespeare's Sonnets

Blurb written on December 8, 2022

School and city life, reunited after years apart.

- A broken relationship mended / pseudo-siblings / reunion at the beginning / from rivals to lovers

- The male and female leads are not on the same household register, and have no romantic relationship while their family ties remain

--- Next book: Ying Zhong / older woman and devoted younger man ---

1.

The Fang family had a tradition of visiting Qi'an Temple to burn incense and pray on the second day of the new year, hoping for peace and good fortune in the year ahead. Fang Shuju had never believed in it, but she had taken the child staying at her home to the temple too.

The child was always well-behaved, but this time he had turned around and run off somewhere.

When Fang Shuju found him amid the thronging crowd, twelve-year-old Cen Ningnan was leaning over an incense table, writing earnestly:

"I hope everything goes well for Big Sis, and that she meets a considerate boss who always pays on time. I hope Panpan stays healthy and keeps Big Sis company until she's ninety-nine. I'll study hard and work hard to make money so I can be the client someday."

He rambled on, listing a thousand wishes, not one of them for himself.

She stared in a daze, then shifted her gaze to his dark eyes and earnest expression.

2.

The years flashed by.

Later, when Fang Shuju visited Qi'an Temple again for something, she happened to spot familiar handwriting.

Twenty-year-old Cen Ningnan had written only a brief wish: "I hope Fang Shuju gets everything she wants."

Standing in the wind, with incense smoke curling around her, she suddenly realized that the boy had grown into an adult. At some point, he had stopped calling her Big Sis.

And yet, guarding her alone on snowy nights, traveling a thousand miles just to send her a greeting, being the first to wish her well at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Day...

Through so many, many long days, Cen Ningnan had always been her puppy.

--"How could time wait for anyone? I was the one waiting for you."

* "There are things that endure in heaven and earth, unlike grapes, unlike flowers, unlike the scant snow."

/ Jorge Luis Borges, Endymion on Mount Latmos

Theme: Everyone will live to see the night when love is made whole